The SBC Scandal

 Throughout my career I was called by one of three titles. (I was called other things but that is irrelevant.)

“Doctor.” A rarely heard title, but I never corrected anyone using it. I’d earned it by hard work and sacrifice (mine and my family’s). Hearing it reminded me of an obligation my opportunity to study imposed. Borrowing words from the obituary of a 19th-century theologian, I realized I should strive to be “a scholar who never forgot he was a Christian, a Christian who never forgot he was a scholar.”

“Pastor.” A challenging title. It is daunting to try to shepherd (pastor is from the Latin for one who feeds or grazes the sheep) through teaching, encouraging, comforting, and sometimes correcting that part of God’s flock under your care.

“Reverend.” A frightening title, from the Latin for “one who is to be revered.” I knew I deserved no reverence, had achieved no special spiritual/moral status. Fortunately, my churches usually had enough God-appointed pedestal-topplers to dissuade me from succumbing to the temptation to think I merited the title.

Though I sincerely hope I never exploited this title, honesty forces me to admit some church leaders have. This, I believe, helps explain the abuse scandal in the Southern Baptist Convention.

Years ago, a distant cousin and her husband were exploited by an associate pastor at their rural church. I’ll call him “Elmer” (as in Gantry). Like many farmers, they maintained a storage tank of gasoline for their farm equipment. Elmer regularly visited them to say he needed his car's tank filled-up and he knew they would want to help him in doing God’s work. Of course, this wasn’t sexual abuse, but it was abuse, an example of manipulation by one perceived to merit reverence.

I don’t know what happened to Elmer, but one wonders if this abuse might have led to greater betrayals of trust.

Exploitation by church leaders began early. In 2 Timothy 3:6, Paul condemns false teachers who “make their way into households and captivate silly women, overwhelmed by their sins and swayed by all kinds of desires.” These seemed to be immature believers, ungrounded in the Faith. (Regrettably, John Calvin believed this verse suggests women are naturally more susceptible to error than men; nothing Paul says implies that.) 

Although Paul doesn’t specify sexual abuse in this verse, less than a century later Irenaeus reported on a false teacher named Marcus: A woman taught by Marcus “… then makes the effort to reward Marcus, not only by the gift of her possessions (in which way he has collected a very large fortune), but also by yielding up to him her person, desiring in every way to be united to him, that she may become altogether one with him." (Cited by Wm. Barclay) We can find such women, often lonely and grateful for the attention Elmer has given them. If Elmers lived in the first century, we shouldn’t be surprised if they live in the twenty-first.

The target might be a single woman or a wife whose husband does not share her faith. If the target if a teenaged girl, she might be flattered by a revered (!) adult’s attention and enjoy feeling “special.” At the same time, if she reports being uncomfortable by his attention she might not be heard, being told she was imagining things; in extreme cases she might be told “Satan is planting those thoughts to make you doubt a good man.” (Not often in an SBC church but not unheard of.) Should she avoid being alone with Elmer, he will simply move on. 

How could men who once made weighty pledges at an ordination service behave this way? It is beyond my province to say they are unconverted, like a modern Gilbert Tennent might say. That they are behaving in ways that belie their profession is certain. 

Doubtless, alongside Elmers there are Arthurs (as in DimmesdaleThe Scarlet Letter). These Arthurs may be seeking relief from the loneliness sometimes associated with the job. Their behavior is still a betrayal of trust, but I like to think it is not an ongoing pattern. Yet, like Arthur they may refuse to confess and seek forgiveness. Perhaps, because of shame, perhaps because, like Arthur, they lived in a community disinclined to forgiveness. Nevertheless, such Arthurs, like the Elmers, he encouraged a cover-up.

How did the SBC cover-up succeed so long?

Our churches believe in forgiveness and restoration. At times this might be an appropriate response to moral failure (though to offer grace to an Elmer without mandating counselling is unwise). Elmers know how to take advantage of this graciousness, how to exploit the goodness of others. If feigning regret lets you escape consequences, it’s a small price to pay. Arthurs may repent and do better.

The SBC fosters intense loyalty in its pastors. Sometimes this promotes an ill-advised resistance to harming the denomination’s reputation. Moreover, there is sometimes a longstanding “old boy’s network” in some areas (pastors there even attended the same seminary) making fellow pastors disinclined to cause trouble for friends. Especially if those friends promise to do better.

The cover-up may reflect distorted priorities. Weeks before the convention, some leaders opined that the whole issue was a satanic plot to shift the convention’s focus from evangelism; they would have had the issue buried. These men forget that the church’s message will remain unheard if the church lacks integrity.

The denomination’s commitment to the hierarchical view of men and women sometimes (note, sometimes) leads to a fundamental disrespect for women. This may make it difficult for women to present themselves as the victims of abuse, especially since some men are inclined to think of women as naturally hysterical (a word reflecting that very prejudice). I don’t agree with those who believe hierarchicalism always leads to abuse, but it happens.

Without giving up that commitment, the convention seems to be trying to address the problem of sexual abuse. I hope it is a sincere and successful effort. In the end, I believe the number of abusive pastors in the convention is small. Most of our pastors are men who would never harm those in their care, men who sacrifice time that might properly belong to their families, men who earn less than others with the same level of education, men who seek to serve God.

As a Baptist, I am obliged to say all this is my opinion. Another Baptist might say something different. 

As I finish, I occurs to me no one called me “A Man of Few Words.”

Meet John Sung

 John Sung (1901-1944) deserves to be better known, especially as historians realize evangelicalism’s influence extends well beyond the West.

Sung was born in the Fujian province of China to parents who converted from Buddhism to Christianity shortly before his birth. While still a child, Sung, worked alongside his father, who had become a Methodist pastor. The youngster distributed tracts and preached occasionally, earning the nickname “little pastor.”  After graduating from high school, a wealthy benefactor offered to pay for his education at Ohio Wesleyan University. After receiving his bachelor’s degree, he moved on to the Ohio State University (Columbus) where he received the Ph.D. in chemistry in 1926. 

Though he had opportunities to teach in the sciences, Sung decided to prepare for the ministry. Following a friend’s advice, he enrolled at Union Theological Seminary in New York. 

Founded in the mid-nineteenth century, Union had by 1926 become the flagship seminary of liberal Christianity. Liberalism, sometimes called modernism, rejected notions like the verbal inspiration of the Bible and generally attempted to divest Christianity of any traces of the supernatural. Miracles, even the resurrection of Christ, were considered myths or fictional tales intended to support a moral lesson, such as the virtue of self-sacrifice. When Sung asked his friend to recommend a seminary, Union may have been mentioned due to its notoriety. Whatever prompted him to attend Union, it was a life-altering experience.  

Recall that during these years many who embraced Christian orthodoxy and believed the Bible to be God-inspired were still reeling from the humiliation of the Scopes trial (1925), where conservative faith was held up to scorn as newspapers and radio reports told of rural bumpkins and conservative pundits attempting to challenge evolution. Those who continued to hold onto  orthodoxy became the targets of acerbic journalists such as H. L. Mencken. In response, some Christians retreated into a sub-culture that distrusted higher education. Pastors warned their members not to allow their children to attend secular universities such as Ohio State. While orthodox seminaries existed, the level of distrust among Bible-believing Christians toward all graduate schools was so widespread, it’s likely many Christians Sung encountered would have had no idea how to advise the young scholar. (It would be two decades before evangelical scholars would establish schools where hard scholarship would challenge the claims of liberalism.)

In the liberal atmosphere of Union Seminary, Sung began to question his faith. Union professors told him the Bible was just another religious text, not God’s special revelation; they told him evangelism and conversion were unnecessary. The work of indigenous pastors like Sung’s father and of the missionaries scattered throughout China was considered presumptuous, unless their goal was simply to improve the material lot of people.  

Disillusioned, Sung considered returning to his mother’s Buddhism and even began chanting Buddhist prayers. This, though his Chinese name Zhu En meant “God’s grace” and was given because he was the first child born after his mother’s conversion to Christianity.  Of this period he would say, “My soul wandered in a wilderness. I could neither sleep nor eat. My faith was like a leaking, storm-driven ship without captain or compass. My heart was filled with the deepest unhappiness.”

Then Sung accepted an invitation to Calvary Baptist Church where he expected to hear a visiting scholar. Instead, he heard Uldine Utley (1909-1995). Utley was a young girl from Oklahoma who preached her first sermon at age eleven. Her preaching possessed such maturity that some of the most highly regarded American fundamentalists endorsed her ministry. John Roach Straton, regarded by some as “the Baptist pope,” was the pastor at Calvary Baptist. After hearing her at a Bible conference in Florida, Stratton invited her to preach at Calvary. 

Ruth Tucker describes the impact hearing the fifteen-year-old evangelist had on the young seminarian.

“Like he had been, she was a ‘little preacher,’ and he was captivated by her message. He returned the following four nights to hear her, vowing that he would pray until God gave him the same power to preach that this girl had. His life was transformed, and in the weeks and months that followed, he spent his time reading the Bible and Christian biographies and testifying of his newly reclaimed faith. When he was given a gift of a globe by a stranger, he took is a sign from God that he would one day preach the gospel around the world. Instead of chanting Buddhist scriptures, he began singing hymns as he walked the halls of the seminary—behavior that was viewed by some of the seminary officials as a sign of mental instability.”

Tucker tells how seminary officials ordered Sung to undergo psychological testing and he was hospitalized for several months. The liberal disdain for heart-felt Christianity ran deep. Yet, during this period of hospitalization, Sung read through the Bible forty times. This, too, would be a life-altering exercise.

In 1927, Sung returned to China and began an evangelistic ministry. While he did not preach around the world, he did preach throughout China and Southeast Asia. Before his death from cancer and tuberculosis in 1944, he led fruitful revivals in Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Taiwan, Thailand, and Singapore. During a crusade in Java, Chinese merchants closed their shops so their workers could attend his meetings. At the beginning of the twenty-first century, there were still church leaders in Southeast Asia whose conversions occurred under his ministry. Because of his success and the strategy of never leaving an area without organizing the Christians into evangelistic bands, one biographer stated, “his ministry can rightly be described as apostolic, and he was possibly the most effective evangelist of the 20th century.”   Irene Tay’s evaluation of Sung’s ministry agrees: “Sung is one of the greatest evangelists of the modern period of church history.” 

Doubtless, Sung’s faith might have been rekindled through his own reading and reflection or through the ministry of evangelical scholars he could have heard in the New York area. Doubtless, he could have gone on to his powerful ministry without ever attending New York’s Calvary Baptist Church. But it happened as it happened. While Sung’s name is known to millions of Asian Christians (though not to as many Americans), the turning point in his pilgrimage came through the ministry of a teenage girl from Oklahoma whose name is also unknown to most Americans.

If ever events should tempt us to invoke the notion of God’s providence, certainly the story of John Sung’s return to faith qualifies. Here we have a young man who came half-way around the world to be trained as a scientist, a man who could have had a quiet life as an academic away from the poverty of his homeland, a nation where political turmoil was becoming a constant reality, but who instead chose to become a minister of the gospel. And in him, we have an ardent young Christian who sought to deepen his knowledge of God’s Word so he might more effectively preach that gospel, but who instead had his faith in that Word eroded by purveyors of doubt. Here we have a young scholar who heads off to what he believes will be a lecture from another scholar only to find himself listening to a young girl from Oklahoma, a girl who had not yet graduated from high school, a girl likely to have been unfamiliar with the periodic table and certainly unable to parse a Greek verb, a girl who never imagined her preaching might impact nations she would never visit. And do not forget this girl was invited to speak by a fundamentalist pastor who defied his fellow fundamentalists by allowing a woman to speak from his pulpit, a pastor who became an articulate defender of women preachers. The girl from Oklahoma and the precedent-defying pastor created the circumstance that would put John Sung back on the road to faith and to a powerful ministry. 

You and I never know how our efforts to serve God’s Kingdom may impact people. And, by God’s grace, we don’t have to be speaking from a prestigious pulpit to make that impact.

For further reading:

Irene Tay, et al, “John Sung,” A Dictionary of Asian Christianity, S. W. Sunquist, ed. Grand Rapids:  William B. Eerdmans, 2001.

Ruth A. Tucker, From Jerusalem to Irian Jaya: A Biographical History of Christian Missions (second edition), Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1984,2004.. 

Hwa Yung, “Sung Revivals in Southeast Asia,” A Dictionary of Asian Christianity, S. BIBLICAL. Sunquist, ed. Grand Rapids:  William B. Eerdmans, 2001, p. 808.